Amidst a season of intense suffering, a colleague says, “unless we’re the happiest people in this city, no one will want to become Christians.” Is this true? Rather than disclose details of my own recent sufferings, I hope instead to share some reflections on eight inspired images. If you will forgive how fragmented and unfinished, these reflections may comfort and encourage as you prepare to grieve with hope in Jesus.
1. The Painful Production Line
In Romans 5:3-5, Paul boasts in sufferings because he knows the painful production line. Indeed, this chain from suffering to endurance, endurance to character, and character to certain hope will repay any reflection. But let us set aside for now the details and note the annoyingly obvious. Paul is only able to boast in sufferings because he knows that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Only because he knows about this painful production line can he boast, can he have this most peculiar and otherworldly reaction to the phenomena of pain. We are reminded that what we know about suffering matters. The question is: what do we know about suffering?
Only because Paul knows about this painful production line can he boast, can he have this most peculiar and otherworldly reaction to the phenomena of pain … What do we know about suffering?
2. The Ostrich
In Job 39:13-—18, God confronts Job with the ostrich. When was the last time you thought of the ostrich? Or used her to comfort or confront the sad? That’s the point. Our ways are not God’s, nor our thoughts his. This bizarre bird that cannot fly, purposefully bereft of bird-like wisdom, nevertheless she outruns the swiftest land-beasts. Here is a mystery, a contradiction—something which lives beyond us and is beyond our comprehension. We are reminded how little we know about suffering.
Though we must always be ready to give an answer for the hope we have, perhaps we can be too ready to give answers for suffering. Job’s comforters should have kept their mouths shut. Because, unlike Job’s readers who have the inside scoop, neither they (nor Job himself) knew the cosmic context to his suffering. Wouldn’t it have made everything so much more bearable just to know? Yet he is not told. And often, neither are we.
Instead, we are told of the ostrich who reminds us that we are not the centre; we are not the only; we are smaller than we can imagine, with limited knowledge and reason. But despite this, we are summoned into relationship with the one who did invent the ostrich; who is mindful of miniscule humanity —even to the point of giving his only Son to suffer for us. And, though we often do not know the reasons for suffering, we do know him.
3. The Crying God
In John 11:35, Jesus wept. This shortest verse confronts us with more than the fact that God suffered. It tells us that the way he suffered was with tears. Mere moments before calling Lazarus from the tomb, Jesus bursts forth in anger and sorrow. Do we rush ourselves or others past such emotions? Do our comforts prove cold as they focus only on the bright side of eternal life? Do we push past the songs of lament predominating the Psalms to join the predominantly ‘poppy’ praise of the present?
How do we hold such sorrowing together with the rejoicing we are commanded to have in all things? Let us at least say that we must hold them together. For at the same time as Paul says he was always rejoicing (2 Corinthians 6:10), in that same book he also describes himself as afflicted, perplexed, struck down, wasting away, groaning, even despairing of life itself (2 Corinthians 1:8-9, 4:7-5:4). Of course, in this description, the servant plagiarises his master. For Life Himself once said he was sorrowful even to death (Matthew 26:38). Do we allow ourselves or others to describe life this way? If not, why not?
Is there room in our Christianity for suffering the way Christ and his Apostle suffered? Is there room in our prayers even for praying the impossible prayer that if there was another way, he would take the sufferings away? Surely being like him is okay? Might it be that such grief might serve rather than hamper our witness to a suffering world? To commend the crying Christ, to follow our happy God who mourns, we must not shy away from sorrowing over sufferings. If we want to be imitators of our God and Saviour, we must not—we cannot—avoid the grief attached to suffering. Of course, there is always more to say, and from the same book in which he wept we are given a blind man to see.
4. The Blind Man
In John 9, the disciples ask Jesus whose fault cost the man his sight. But it’s the wrong question. Jesus turns the focus away from the past towards the present opportunity to do the merciful works of God. Not only are we promised that God will turn evil into good for those who love him, but we are called to be children like our Father. Like his only son, we are also to see in suffering an opportunity to pray for, hope for, and sacrificially act for the glorious mercy of God. Do we see suffering as an opportunity for God to do good to us and others, as an opportunity for us to do good to others? For this is what Jesus saw in the blind man and even in the darkness of death itself.
5. Tears of Blood
In Luke 22:39-46, Jesus agonises to the point of shedding bloody tears. From humble birth to shameful crucifixion, Jesus was the man of sorrows; unwelcomed, despised, misunderstood, exhausted, scorned, homeless, betrayed, denied, abandoned, hated, thrust out of the world onto the cross. How wise were our forebears in selecting this single word to describe the life of Jesus in the Apostle and Nicene Creeds: He suffered. And he did so for us. That we might be adopted and so share in life giving sufferings.
Not only does suffering seem a sign of divine abandonment, it is often in suffering that God feels the farthest away. But our feelings betray us. For in our sufferings we fellowship, we are counted worthy to come so close to Christ as to share something of the experience of the godforsaken man of sorrows. Indeed, Peter reminds us that when we share Christ’s sufferings, it is precisely then that the Spirit of God and of glory rests upon us (1 Peter 4:12-17). Are we willing to suffer if it means fellowship with Jesus, if it means the presence of God?
And God is with us, beloved children adopted in the crucified Christ, so that we might be like his only son and share in the family business. If his job was accomplished only through suffering, what must we expect? Our vocation is like his: suffering sinlessly for the sake of others. Is that not one reason we are left here, we who this very moment are qualified by his blood for entry into heaven itself? On the one hand, this takes place as we receive comfort during our afflictions which we can then pass to others (2 Corinthians 1:3—4). On the other hand, filling up Christ’s sufferings means enduring anything so that others might obtain eternal, glorious salvation in Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:24, 2 Timothy 2:10). Are we not willing to endure anything if it means comfort and eternal life for others?
6. The Thorn
In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul boasts about the time when God saved him by saying “no”. He boasts about a thorn. For although God delivered Paul from distress in 2 Corinthians 1, we learn in 2 Corinthians 12 that deliverance is not the only possibility. Paul begged three painful times for this mysterious thorn to be plucked from his flesh. And God said no. But he also promised sufficient grace—inexhaustible power to perfectly empower the exhausted. For deliverance is not the only possibility, sometimes God leaves us in suffering and empowers us to endure.
As an aside, although such endurance will certainly climax in ultimate deliverance, such suffering can last a long time. How long the thorn lingered in Paul’s flesh we do not know. But consider Abraham, who died not having received the things promised (Hebrews 12:13). The father of many spent a century caught in the tension between material blessing (animals and servants), profound material poverty (not a plot of land or a single child), and intense spiritual unfulfilment (for that profound material poverty was the point of God’s unfulfilled promises) … And then, joy of joys, after so many years of suffering: a son! … And then, sorrow of sorrows, he is commanded to offer up his only son.
We must not dare to skip to the end too quickly. Yes, Jehovah Jireh provides atop the mountain. But Abraham had to wake early, in fear and trembling, alone in his suffering. For three days of unimaginable angst he travelled, finally climbing the long path up the mountain alone with his son. How long, O Lord? Deliverance will come, joy comes with the morning, but it may only be after enduring a lifelong night of suffering.
We must not dare to skip to the end too quickly. Yes, Jehovah Jireh provides atop the mountain. But Abraham had to wake early, in fear and trembling, alone in his suffering. … Deliverance will come, joy comes with the morning, but it may only be after enduring a lifelong night of suffering.
And yet, even as God gives endurance for the suffering, it may be that the suffering itself gives endurance. For Paul says that this thorn was given both as messenger of Satan to harass him and also to keep him from pride (2 Corinthians 12:7). For God is in the business of forcing evil to work for good. How curious that Paul mentions the thorn is Satan’s messenger. It is possible to forget Satan entirely, collapsing him back into an overemphasised sovereignty of God. But Paul did not forget to include Satan, for forgetting him would underemphasise the sovereignty of God. For our God thwarts his cosmic foe by turning Satan’s powers against himself. Satan would have used this thorn as a club to beat Paul from the narrow path, but God hacked Satan’s club and transformed it into a shepherd’s staff. Far from beating him from the path to life, this suffering would keep him upon it.
It is hard to imagine, but it is more than possible that the very sufferings we experience are intended to produce endurance.[1] As Agur prayed for neither poverty nor riches, as one leads to theft and the other to prideful denial (Proverbs 30:8—9), so we might pray neither for too many nor too few sufferings. But for just enough. Could it be that without our sufferings we would leave life and fall away? If suffering this suffering means that you will endure for life eternal, are you willing to suffer?
7. The Dry Sea
In Revelation 21, the first glimpse John gets is of what will not be in heaven. The sea is no more. As a symbol of sufferings and the source of sufferings, the sea’s removal is the assurance that calamity will not come again; neither shall chaos rise, but perfect peace shall attend the reign of God and the Lamb forever and ever (Revelation 22:3–5). Though we have sailed through ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, in that day God himself will finally “take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end [it].” This aquatic angle assures us that, whatever else heaven may be, it will be bereft of both suffering and the possibility of suffering. And that’s just the first glimpse of what will not be in heaven. The start of forever is the end of suffering.
Of course, true bliss is not the removal of suffering but the final fulfilment of God and his kingdom forever and ever. What heaven will be is not worth comparing to present sufferings (Romans 8:18-19, 2 Corinthians 4:17-18). Not because our sufferings now are not horrific, but because heaven will be unimaginably wonderful. That blessed estate will be worth the suffering of God from cradle to calvary. It will be WORTH the horrific sufferings that Christ’s people “fill up” (Col 1:24) in his name. And if it is worth that, then the glory of heaven must be incomprehensibly incomparable.
8. Bodies in the Wilderness
In Hebrews 3, we are reminded of the bodies in the wilderness. Ponder the difference between groaning, grieving and grumbling. The former two are sanctioned, even sanctified, as we have seen. But the latter leads to death. Obviously, this means that what we do when we suffer matters. As we have seen, it is of eternal consequence. In the book of Numbers, we see the escalating untruthfulness of grumbling. In chapter 11, the people grumble about manna falling from heaven. They wish—with faulty, selective memories—for the delicacies of Egypt. But by chapter 20, the people have themselves chosen not to enter the promised land and so God has barred them from doing so. But by the waters of Meribah, they grumble that God himself has brought them into the desert to kill them. What bitter untruth! He had intended the desert to be a path to the promised land.
And if we similarly speak and act untruthfully, we are in danger of consigning ourselves to death. We can dishonour God as we unplug ourselves from the painful production line, speaking out against what we know to be true: that—despite what we do not know—God subjects us to grief even as he promises to use suffering for everlasting good; that he afflicts us, not to kill us in the desert, but to bring us to life unending. Will we seek to live in light of what we know, to refrain from grumbling even as we pour ourselves out in grief?
Of course, such incomplete reflections on these eight inspired images are but imperfect fuel for the fires of godly lives in suffering. But they are shared with the hope that you might be encouraged. Not to idly ponder them, but to join the author in this daily battle of earnest striving to live in their light. It is my prayer that the God of grace might use them to empower our faith to work, that we might grieve together with hope until neither grief nor hope are necessary. I pray that we might, with our apostle, strain forward to what lies ahead, even desiring that we may “know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible we may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
[1] If you’re struggling so to imagine, consider Kierkegaard’s parable of the lily as summarised by Backhouse in Kierkegaard: A Single Life. “Consider the lilies. Once upon a time there was a lily who stood alone in a dell, with only some small flowers and nettles for company. He was happy until one day a malicious bird flitted by, filling the lily’s head with tales of more beautiful lilies, growing in masses beyond the dell. The lily grew troubled. Why was it secluded, all alone, with only weeds for company? The lily wished to be magnificent too, so he asked the bird to carry him to the yonder hill. The bird plucked the lily by its roots and duly deposited him amongst the masses of similar flowers. Alas, the lily could not take root. He withered and died.”
